Without Consciousness The Mind-body Problem Would Be

Once We Have Taken The Backward Step To An Abstract View Of Our Whole System Of Beliefs, Evidence, And Justification, And Seen That It Works Only, Despite Its Pretensions, By Taking The World Largely For Granted, We Are Not In A Position To Contrast All These Appearances With An Alternative Reality. We Cannot Shed Our Ordinary Responses, And If We Could It Would Leave Us With No Means Of Conceiving A Reality Of Any Kind.

Eventually, I Believe, Current Attempts To Understand The Mind By Analogy With Man-made Computers That Can Perform Superbly Some Of The Same External Tasks As Conscious Beings Will Be Recognized As A Gigantic Waste Of Time.

To Look For A Single General Theory Of How To Decide The Right Thing To Do Is Like Looking For A Single Theory Of How To Decide What To Believe.

Reason Is Universal Because No Attempted Challenge To Its Results Can Avoid Appealing To Reason In The End-by Claiming, For Example, That What Was Presented As An Argument Is Really A Rationalization. This Can Undermine Our Confidence In The Original Method Or Practice Only By Giving Us Reasons To Believe Something Else, So That Finally We Have To Think About The Arguments To Make Up Our Minds.

The More Details We Learn About The Chemical Basis Of Life And The Intricacy Of The Genetic Code, The More Unbelievable The Standard Historical Account Becomes